


we were like pomegranates

by yoonbot (iverins)



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Gen, Woozi-centric, friendship!Woozi/Hoshi, friendship!Woozi/S.Coups
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-13
Updated: 2015-12-13
Packaged: 2018-05-06 11:05:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5414486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iverins/pseuds/yoonbot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jihoon tries to navigate his life as a second year art major.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we were like pomegranates

**Author's Note:**

> originally written for the [jamjam fic exchange](http://jamjamexchange.livejournal.com/).
> 
>  **warnings:** inaccurate representations of being an art major, emotional turmoil.

Seungcheol's feet are sticking out from beneath his blanket when Jihoon walks past the living room to the kitchen. The heater's been off since midnight, and Jihoon wonders why Seungcheol hasn't retracted his legs, letting his toes numb and redden in the cold instead. He sighs, makes himself a cup of instant coffee. It looks more like water than a caffeine fix even in the darkness.

As Jihoon's heading back to his study, he makes his way over to Seungcheol, moving to pull the blanket over his exposed toes. Shakes his head with a little smile on his lips. Maybe lets his gaze linger on how peaceful Seungcheol looks for a moment longer than he should. Suddenly, he feels tired, tired and cold and uninspired, and it's six in the morning, mug filled with instant coffee in his hand, and he suddenly just wants to fall asleep. 

Jihoon frowns once he's back at his desk, white page of his sketchbook staring up at him blankly. Lays his head down on it, hoping some dormant part of his creativity will spill out onto it. He closes his eyes and sighs again.

The next thing Jihoon remembers is dreaming about colorless pomegranates.

 

 

 

There's a new model in the three o'clock life drawing class the next day. Jihoon's still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes as he sets up his easel before he realizes it. 

The model looks about his age - sophomore university student - which Jihoon finds strange. In the few life drawing courses Jihoon had attended before, the models were at least in their late twenties to thirties. He looks around at his other classmates, busy setting up their pencils and charcoals, to see if anyone else has noticed the change, too. 

Jihoon has this weird itchy feeling building under his skin as the clock hand approaches the twelve to mark the beginning of class. He doesn't know why - maybe it's the subpar caffeine he's been getting from the only shitty instant coffee he can afford, maybe it's the lack of sleep. Maybe a bit of both. Maybe it's remembering Seungcheol's bare toes sticking out from under his blanket, ice cold when Jihoon's fingers grazed them as he covered them. That kind of feeling. Unnerved and unnerving. 

Three o'clock. The model-who-can't-be-older-than-him steps up onto the platform and takes off his robe as Jihoon leans over to take his charcoals out of his backpack. All Jihoon can really see is an almost too-slim back, strong like a bow string being pulled back by an archer, curved as he leans over his knees slightly, seated. 

He draws. Lets out the deep breath he'd been holding at the end of class.

 

 

 

"Dreamed about pomegranates last night, I bet," Seungcheol chuckles when Jihoon just grimaces in response. He takes another bite of his sandwich from his seat in his rolling chair while Seungcheol props his feet up on the coffee table beside their couch, covered with open textbooks and loose homework sheets. 

Jihoon wrinkles his nose as he thinks about all the assignments he has due just by staring at Seungcheol's. "I should've never told you about that," he mutters through gritted teeth. Seungcheol just smiles that all-knowing, annoying, but not _that_ annoying, smile. 

"You'd tell me eventually," Seungcheol says through a mouth full of lettuce. "Or I'd just know, or something."

Jihoon snorts. "Oh yeah?" Seungcheol nods.

"Definitely," he affirms with a sheepish grin and Jihoon can only roll his eyes with a ridiculous smile that probably mirrored Seungcheol's on his face. "I just _know_ , you know, Jihoon." He leans over to nudge Jihoon with his elbow.

"Mhm-hmm," Jihoon hums through his mouthful of food, unconvinced. 

Seungcheol feigns a hurt look. "You doubt our friendship, Jihoonie?" He reaches over and loops his arm over Jihoon's shoulders in some warped kind of choke hold. "I'm so heartbroken!"

Jihoon groans and swats him away. "You think you're _so_ funny." He laughs half-heartedly when Seungcheol loses his balance and almost falls off his perch on the couch armrest.

 

 

 

It was impossible to discern when Jihoon met Seungcheol or vice versa. Seungcheol was in all of Jihoon's earliest memories – from skinning his knee on the pavement during tag, the blood continuing to flow like a "volcano," as Seungcheol put it (that only made Jihoon start to cry) – and Jihoon was in all of Seungcheol's. Jihoon's childhood wasn't Jihoon's unless Seungcheol was in it, their lives interconnected like Jihoon saw their shadows sometimes when Seungcheol rested his head on his shoulder - a conjoined, two-headed entity shifting in the corner of his eye. 

_Maybe we were just born knowing each other,_ Seungcheol decided one day when they were twelve, arms folded behind his head, staring up at the ceiling of Jihoon's bedroom. Though that didn't make much sense to Jihoon then, or maybe he just actively didn't want to believe it, Seungcheol's words are what come to mind whenever someone (usually one of Seungcheol's new friends) asks how they became friends. Most of the time, Jihoon ends up smiling and nodding along to whatever variety of _we go way back_ Seungcheol feels like offering that night. 

_We were just born knowing each other._ A rather romantic notion, though he doubts Seungcheol remembers even saying those words. Words were always flowing out of Seungcheol, warm sounds, bright like hues of apricot and various shades of salmon that made Jihoon's hands itch with the need to pick up charcoal or a paintbrush or a pencil just to shade them into objects that could lift off the page and become something _real_. Jihoon never took the phrase _actions speak louder than words_ to heart, because Seungcheol's actions _were_ his words: the way he smiled softly when he spoke about his family or the new song he loved, furrowing his brows when he asked Jihoon if he was okay after falling asleep in class, eyes wet when they graduated high school and whenever they made up from some stupid fight that spiraled out of control. 

But words lacked the dimension actions could give. So Jihoon poured Seungcheol's words into strokes of lavender and tawny gold, sketched them into coral skeletons beneath the sea, where the fish could whisper their secrets and never get caught. They could speak without words in Jihoon's stead – say I love you, Seungcheol, I love you, love you, love you, in ways that Jihoon's words – so lacking compared to Seungcheol's – couldn't. Jihoon's voice just never sounded like the truth, even when he was telling it. 

And in between the canvases and sketchbooks and pastels, Jihoon created a universe where it was possible that he could speak it, and have Seungcheol say it back to him.

 

 

 

Jihoon’s eyes are again focused on a clock approaching three o'clock. He sets his supplies on his easel without his fingers fumbling and manages to sit still in his seat as his professor and that new model walk in the door together, chatting amicably. Said model does not acknowledge his presence. Everything unfolds smoothly. 

He takes his place on the platform, this time standing, arms loose and relaxed at his sides, face tilted down. His profile faces Jihoon, one sharp eye - a fox eye, Jihoon thinks absentmindedly as he drags his charcoal over the paper - focused on the ground before him. His strokes feel heavy and slow, the lines on his paper darker than usual, as class goes on. 

Jihoon feels the itch begin beneath his skin. He wonders if pomegranates will come to mind. They, for some odd reason, don't.

 

 

 

_Pomegranate in his left hand, charcoal in his right -_

 

 

 

"Do you ever have these bursts of memory?" Jihoon asked Seungcheol one night, when they were walking back from the library, the street light in front of their apartment flickering like a strobe light. "You just remember - _really_ clearly - and then you're not sure if it's even..." he searches for the right words, "something that actually happened."

Seungcheol considered, looking up at the flickering light. One of the best things about Seungcheol was that he never judged Jihoon for anything. Maybe they'd known each other for so long that Seungcheol was just used to it, or that Seungcheol even anticipated the heavy questions Jihoon sometimes threw his way, but Jihoon never felt exposed or ridiculous for voicing his thoughts aloud to the other boy. "Hmm...maybe," he answered truthfully, turning his eyes back to Jihoon.

"I don't know why but everytime I'm uninspired and stuck and don't want to, I don't know... _art_ , I remember pomegranates." Jihoon scrapeed the bottom of his sneaker on the scratchy cement of the curb. Did it again. Seungcheol looked at him with his full attention, waiting for him to go on. "My first drawing class, or, I guess, the first one I remember going to? We drew pomegranates. Or we were supposed to. I don't remember if I did or not. I just remember that it was hard - really fucking _hard_ \- and some other student started crying about it because our teacher was pretty strict...it was a mess. I probably would've quit art but I think I threw the pomegranate against my easel and then my parents signed me up for a different class...yeah." Ran a nervous hand through his hair. "Random but yeah. I think about pomegranates when I have artist's block."

Seungcheol nodded, processing all Jihoon's told him. Silence settled between them for a bit. Jihoon's mind wandered to unrelated thoughts in the quiet, wondering if Seungcheol regretted telling Jihoon all his horrible hygiene tales when all he had to hold against Jihoon was his pomegranates. "So," Seungcheol started, putting his hands in his pockets, quite sincere. "Are you thinking about pomegranates now?"

Jihoon looked up from the curb he'd been scraping with his shoe. Seungcheol looked back at him – Seungcheol, whose words became salmons and purple-toned blues, things that Jihoon could touch. His heart beat in his chest, painfully loud, red like the pomegranate that bled after it cracked open and hit the ground, leaving a juicy red stain on the white of the blank canvas – 

Took a deep breath. Let it out. "No."

 

 

 

“Jihoon, right?”

Jihoon looks up from where he’s setting up his pencils. It’s been two weeks since the new model has come to their class and the said boy leans slightly over Jihoon’s easel, enough to be interested, but not overwhelming enough that he blocks Jihoon’s peripheral vision. Innocuous, maybe. The weird feeling begins to crawl under his skin. He blinks and the boy goes a little fuzzy, blinks again and looks back down at his easel. 

“What’s it to you?” he says, taking out some charcoals. The model boy smiles, and it lights up his whole face. Jihoon’s only ever seen him from at least five feet away, and never quite face-on, so if it hadn’t been for the almost-white blond hair, Jihoon might not have even remembered who he was. 

“I saw your sketches of me and I really like them,” he starts, words tumbling out quickly – but rather than tripped over and forced out, they traveled with an ease that Jihoon could never speak with. “They’re very inspiring. I’m not sure if that’s the right word for it, but I couldn’t stop staring at them! Other people drew like a science textbook figure…really anatomical and accurate, but lifeless. But yours were really art. I could feel the body language of the figures on the paper. That’s talent, for sure. You’re talented, Jihoon.”

Jihoon looks up at him again, not sure how to react. He didn’t even remember what his sketches in the past two weeks looked like – if he liked them, if he wanted to never lay eyes on them again, if he felt like redoing them all. All that came to mind was pomegranates. 

“By the way, I’m Soonyoung,” the model says, stretching out a hand. He leans back a bit, again respecting Jihoon’s personal bubble. Jihoon considers taking it, but glances down at his charcoal dusted fingertips before holding them up to Soonyoung. The smile’s still on his face even when he retracts his hand, his eyes sharper than Jihoon remembers them being. 

Instead of the robe, he’s clothed in a simple t-shirt and faded jeans. “Are you not modeling today?” Jihoon asks, trying to string a sentence together. Soonyoung laughs lightly and nods.

“Yeah,” Soonyoung shrugs. “I’ll be back next week, though. Just wanted to stop by and tell you I appreciated your art. Do you think I could take a picture of them or something? Is that okay with you?”

Jihoon furrows his eyebrows. The professor walks in, the clock close to three, the rustling of paper and pencils and charcoals reaching its zenith. “Uh…you should probably ask the professor about that,” he tries, but Jihoon doesn’t even know if it really matters. People have never asked to take pictures of his class assignments before.

Soonyoung laughs, a little louder this time. “Well, I better go now. Nice meeting you, Jihoon.” 

“Yeah,” Jihoon echoes, disoriented, the itch strange on his skin. Soonyoung grins at him before walking away, his thin frame disappearing out the doorway. He turns back to the platform Soonyoung stood on just last week, dragging dark, dark lines of charcoal on his paper yet again.

 

 

 

Seungcheol’s not home when Jihoon gets back. He throws his backpack down next to the couch Seungcheol sleeps on more often than not, sighs at Seungcheol’s unfolded blanket crumpled behind a clump of pillows, tosses Seungcheol’s socks in the laundry basket. It’s that time of the semester again, when everything Seungcheol owns is thrown around haphazardly and forgotten about until needed or remembered.

Sometimes, Jihoon wonders if he’s like one of Seungcheol’s things. This is one of them. Flops onto the couch. It doesn’t smell like anything, really. Good, Jihoon thinks, closing his eyes, seeing pomegranates. Good.

 

 

 

_Pomegranate in his left hand, charcoal in his right – he’s got a weak throw with his left, but why not –_

 

 

 

“How’s your final project going?” Jeonghan asks him as they’re packing up their things after their still-life class. Jihoon’s known Jeonghan ever since they’d been in all the same classes during their first semester. They’d been friendly since then, eating the occasional meal out together with other art majors, giving each other feedback on past works. 

Jihoon shrugs. “It’s…going. I guess.”

Jeonghan laughs, loud, each “ha” clearly enunciated. He brushes his long hair out of his eyes. “Same,” he says with a lopsided grin, patting Jihoon on the shoulder. “Well, as long as we have an idea.”

“Uh, yeah,” Jihoon frowns. Jeonghan swings his messenger bag over his shoulder and takes in the look on Jihoon’s face.

They’re exiting the building, winter evening outside the glass doors already dark, when Jeonghan just says it. “You’re kinda fucked, Jihoon.”

Jihoon pulls his scarf closer to his face. “You think I don’t know that?” he groans, the words muffled. Jeonghan laughs his carefree laugh again, puffing translucent cream clouds into the shadowy dusk. For some strange reason, it makes Jihoon crave shitty instant coffee.

 

 

 

Soonyoung happens to be sitting next to the easel Jihoon’d been eyeing since Monday class when he walks in on Wednesday. They’d been talking more and more before class since that first day Soonyoung approached him (mostly Soonyoung initiating the conversation and Jihoon filling in the designated blanks from his inquiries). But Soonyoung didn’t always talk to only him – Jihoon saw him chatting with other students before and after class, too. 

“Hey,” he greets Jihoon when he stops in front of his seat. “Those are some crazy dark circles you got there.”

Jihoon absentmindedly touches them. Usually, Seungcheol would point them out to him (and then he’d say something along the lines of _you have to start sleeping more, Jihoon_ and make sure Jihoon was in bed before settling down for another round of studying until four in the morning), but Jihoon hasn’t seen him awake for most of the past two weeks. He snorts. “Yeah, I guess so, huh,” he says, unzipping his backpack.

“Final project?” Soonyoung asks. Jihoon shrugs nonchalantly, Soonyoung watching him with his sharp eyes.

“Not really sure what I’m going to do yet,” Jihoon tries, tone airy. Seungcheol hadn’t been home or conscious enough when he was home for Jihoon to ask him for any favors – Jihoon was pretty sure he’d be able to pull off a figure-drawing even with Seungcheol fully clothed. Seungcheol didn’t make him think of pomegranates – after all, last year, he’d gotten compliments for his final project that he’d painted thinking of Seungcheol’s words. Soonyoung leans back in his stool, his tilted back leaning on nothing for support, eyes still on Jihoon.

“Me and the other models have already posed for several final projects, if you’re doing something like that,” Soonyoung suggests, twirling one of Jihoon’s pencils he placed on his easel between his index and middle finger. “All standing.” He smiles at Jihoon before pushing himself upright once again with a languid ease. 

“Don’t you get tired from posing?” Jihoon asks, though the answer is obvious. But Soonyoung’s not like other models – other models are more about posing for getting the extra pay, while Soonyoung actually seems excited about seeing the results of not only Jihoon’s, but other people’s, sketches of him. 

Soonyoung chuckles. “Of course I do,” he starts, tone not patronizing Jihoon at all. Glances at Jihoon in the corner of his eye, a twinkle somewhere in there. “But I always stand for art.”

 

 

 

Jihoon pays extra attention to Soonyoung’s posing that day, taking in the controlled lines – fluid but strong, and the way how he stands exudes some kind of emotion. Today, he’s all slumped shoulders, not too hunched, but not upright; loose arms, looser than the sharper lines he usually holds them as, a thumb barely making contact with his chin, but still there, as if it could drop down at any moment; weight on his left leg, the right bent and relaxed, toes on the ground. Lazy, Jihoon tries at first, tracing in the lines loosely. Halfway, he changes his direction, once he realizes the sturdy and sure look in Soonyoung’s eyes.

 _I always stand for art,_ Soonyoung had said. Jihoon sees planes of periwinkle and indigo in the angles of his torso.

Confident, he tries instead.

 

 

 

_**Class Email for Art 1B** _

_Please do check in your final project progress with me at some point before the week of the deadline._

_Best._

 

 

 

“What if I just draw you instead?” Jihoon jokes to Jeonghan as they’re waiting for their food. Jisoo, Nayeon, Myungeun, and Wonwoo are sitting at the table with them, each taking turns describing their final project woes over greasy food. Jihoon usually didn’t spend the night out with friends this late in the semester, but Seungcheol had been too busy to eat a meal with him for weeks now and it’d been lonely in their freezing apartment by himself. 

“Me? No way,” Jeonghan laughs. “I don’t want my face to become distorted into your abstract lines and shit,” he teases. Jihoon kicks him under the table.

Nayeon grins, amused, while Myungeun shakes her head. “I mean, your hair would be pretty interesting to draw, you know,” she says through a mouth full of fries. Jeonghan pretends to throw his drink at her and Nayeon just opens her mouth in response, as if she could catch all the liquid in there. 

“You at least have an idea, though, right, Jihoon?” Jisoo tries. Jeonghan shoots him a look and then Jisoo’s eyes widen. “Oh, uh, so you don’t. Uh. Sorry.”

“You could be stuck with sculptures,” Myungeun mutters bitterly out of the corner of her mouth that’s not occupied in biting her straw. “Me and Wonwoo are losing our fucking minds.”

“Sculpting was fun though,” Jeonghan says, to which Myungeun just grumbles more. Wonwoo looks like he’s doing his best not to fall asleep. Jihoon feels relatively lucky in comparison, before remembering he still hasn’t figured out what to do.

“It’s fucking artist’s block, though,” Jihoon groans, reaching for Nayeon’s last handful of fries. She glares at him as he stuffs them in his mouth, but he doubts she minds much at all. Myungeun flicks Wonwoo’s forehead on the other end of the table, and he flinches back awake with a dazed sheepish grin.

Jeonghan puts his elbows on the table. “But I’ve seen you drawing things for life drawing? Maybe you could do something with that.”

Jisoo pipes up. “It doesn’t even have to be phenomenal, you know, just…pass this semester and then worry about the next one?” 

Jihoon groans into his arms. “Sounds like the life of a normal university student to me,” he hears Wonwoo say. Everyone else choruses lifelessly in agreement.

 

 

 

Pencil to paper later that night. Closes his eyes, thinks of Seungcheol’s words. _We were born just knowing each other._

Jihoon hadn’t heard Seungcheol’s voice much in weeks. Muffled through his blanket as he talked in his sleep. Distorted by static over the phone. Weeks were too little a fraction of time compared to how long they’d known each other to forget completely how Seungcheol sounded like, but the colors Jihoon always associated with the softness of Seungcheol’s words were growing muddy and unclear. 

After an hour of sketching, all Jihoon can make out are scribbled lines that don’t even connect to form anything. His fingers, stiff from the cold, still insist on weaving through his pencil through the doodles again and again, repeat.

When he tilts his head a little to the left at five thirty-six in the morning, Jihoon swears he sees pomegranate seeds in between the graphite. 

 

 

 

_Pomegranate in his left hand, charcoal in his right – he’s got a weak throw with his left, but why not – this is hard and the girl’s crying in the corner and the teacher’s mean –_

 

 

 

“I was actually a dancer before this,” Soonyoung confesses over a cup of coffee. Class had ended earlier than usual, and Jihoon wasn’t in a rush to return to an empty apartment, so he’d agreed to Soonyoung’s suggestion on getting something to drink together. Talking to Soonyoung was surprisingly easy – after their first conversation, Jihoon hadn’t anticipated he’d want to talk to Soonyoung much more, but Soonyoung was bubbling with words. He was kind in a way different from Seungcheol – his kindness came from how genuinely curious he was about everything anyone had to say. 

Jihoon puts down his coffee cup after burning his tongue on it. “Really?” He thinks about how easy Soonyoung used his body to express himself in the studio, and even just by the way he was crossing his legs and leaning far back in his chair over coffee. It made sense to Jihoon now.

“Hurt myself two years ago though. So I can’t dance much until that heals up and even then,” he shrugs. “I might not be able to dance the way I used to. You never know, though.” An optimistic smile tugs on his lips behind his coffee cup.

“Then how’d you become a model for a life drawing class?” Jihoon asks. Soonyoung sits back up, tapping his fingers against the table, almost rhythmically. 

“Like anyone becomes a model for a life drawing class,” he deadpans. Jihoon rolls his eyes. “Okay, okay, well, I had a friend who graduated last year, but he told me they needed new models. So I let him sign me up for it since I needed the extra cash, and,” Soonyoung shrugs. “Yeah.”

“I mean, my mom was super against it when I told her my new part-time job. Said I was ‘selling my body,’ like I was a gigolo or something,” Soonyoung laughs a little, his eyes darkening. “I almost quit after my first week because she said stuff like that.”

Jihoon spins his cup of coffee, waiting for him to continue.

“But then I got to see what you guys work on in class and it was just,” Soonyoung shakes his head, eyes brightening again. “ _Amazing._ The way I pose can be captured so many ways, that was so incredible to me.” He leans his elbows on the table to look at Jihoon a little closer. “It reminded me a lot of dancing – all art is just different people expressing themselves in their own unique ways. And I really wanted to be a part of it, now that I can’t dance like I used to, you know?”

Jihoon takes a sip of his coffee – too cold for his taste now – as he considers all this. “But can’t the way you pose be considered an art, too? Not just a part of it,” he says, honest.

Soonyoung smiles in that way that lights up his entire face. “I’ve never heard of it like that but,” his eyes crinkle happily. “If you put it that way, then yes.”

Jihoon blinks, not sure what to do. He’s never really made anyone smile that wide – usually it was sarcasm and teasing that brought lopsided smiles or short laughs out of people – not looks of pure happiness. Maybe with Seungcheol, but even then, Seungcheol was usually the one coercing smiles out of Jihoon. 

Soonyoung acts for him. Places a hand over his on his coffee cup. “Thanks, Jihoon.”

For the first time in a while, the itch crawls uncomfortably under his skin.

 

 

 

Jihoon’s nursing a cup of watered-down (shitty) instant coffee at one AM, watching Seungcheol solve equations, hunched over his textbooks. It’s the first time he’s seen Seungcheol on the couch, awake, in a while. The way he’s sitting reminds Jihoon of that one pose Soonyoung did – sitting on a block on the platform, the curve of his lean back and the sharpness of the one eye Jihoon could see from where he was sitting. A fox eye. 

“Hey, Seungcheol,” Jihoon tries. Seungcheol lifts his head slightly to show he’s listening, eyes still focused down on his homework. “I feel like I don’t see you anymore.”

Seungcheol looks up completely at that, pencil still in his hand. His eyebrows crease toward each other. “What do you mean by that?” he says, voice even. Jihoon laughs a little, but it gets stuck in his throat.

“I mean, you’re never here anymore. Or you’re sleeping. And…you’re busy, I know, but it’s just. I don’t know,” Jihoon sighs. Seungcheol still looks confused, but concerned now and Jihoon is starting to feel like a huge dick.

“Actually, this is really dumb,” he starts muttering, and Seungcheol’s eyebrows just furrow together more, but _is it wrong to just want to see you because I love you and there’s just so much distance between us these days that it hurts a lot, you don’t have to love me back or know or say anything, but just_ be _here or something, Seungcheol._ “You know, just forget it.”

“Jihoon,” Seungcheol starts, his voice so soft that Jihoon almost wants to cry and he doesn’t even know why. His voice is that voice that makes the words that escape his lips so kind and warm and caring and Jihoon doesn’t know why he can’t be sincere and just tell him – _i love you, i love you, i love you_ – instead of swallowing again and pretending his eyes are still dry. “You know you can tell me anything. It’s not dumb if it’s bothering you –”

He shrugs, his heart swelling and bursting in place of every beat in his chest. It hurts like a motherfucker, but Jihoon doesn’t even know what to say anymore. “Stressed out,” he manages, and Seungcheol puts his pencil down, walking over to Jihoon and wrapping his arms around him.

Jihoon stiffens before relaxing into Seungcheol’s hug, warm in the cold, Seungcheol’s scent a mix of the cheap soap brand they decided on during freshman year and the hint of foregoing a shower in favor of studying. “I miss you, too, Jihoon,” he hears Seungcheol say against his shoulder and Jihoon smiles a little. Seungcheol doesn’t know that’s only half of it – doesn’t have to know that that’s only half of it.

Jihoon dreams of pomegranates again that night. 

 

 

 

_Pomegranate in his left hand, charcoal in his right – he’s got a weak throw with his left, but why not – this is hard and the girl’s crying in the corner and the teacher’s mean –_

_Throw the pomegranate, throw the pomegranate, throw, throw –_

 

 

 

“Why don’t you just tell him?”

Jihoon flinches, blinking away the flashes of green burned into his eyes from staring out the window for too long. He looks over at Jeonghan, who isn’t even looking back at him, brush mixing his paints together. _I can’t work alone,_ he told Jihoon last year, and always had to have him, or Jisoo, or Nayeon sitting in the studio with him as he worked. The crisscrossing planes of color Jeonghan tended to paint in seemed to capture even the faintest hums of noise that the people surrounding him gave off – a sigh here, a particularly sharp inhale there. 

“What?” Jihoon says, squinting. The green is still there. Jeonghan shakes the one strand that always falls out of his ponytail away from his face. 

He starts painting, bold, unapologetic strokes on a canvas already half-filled with color. Kind of like his words. “Seungcheol, Jihoon,” Jeonghan sighs. “Seungcheol.”

Jihoon shrugs. “What’s there to tell?” Jeonghan’s known since Jihoon introduced him to Seungcheol – _you’re the first friend Jihoon’s made at university, please take care of him!_ and then he noticed the way Jihoon looked at him and just knew. 

Later that year, Nayeon tried to introduce Jihoon to one of her friends. ( _She’s an economics major! Don’t you think that’s great?_ ) Jeonghan had just placed a hand on her shoulder and shook his head. 

“Jihoon already likes someone.” And that’s how Jihoon figured out Jeonghan knew.

Jeonghan puts his brush down. “Maybe just bottling it up inside you has something to do with your artist’s block,” he tries. Jihoon stares at him with wary, tired eyes. Looks away once Jeonghan looks back at him. “I don’t know…I just get the feeling that you need to get it off your chest. You’ve been friends for so long, you know, nothing bad could happen –”

Jihoon swallows. “What’s there to tell?” he repeats, glancing out the window again. _It’s not that easy,_ he wants to tell Jeonghan. Out there existed a universe where Jihoon could tell Seungcheol all sorts of things without his tongue actually tripping over the words, and that universe consisted of flat paper images and the smell of drying paint and deep breaths of exhaustion because he’d poured himself out onto the canvas and left nothing inside, his body but an empty husk – 

And that universe wasn’t here, or now, or close.

 

 

 

Jihoon finds Soonyoung standing in front of last week’s work after class. He’s biting the corner of his thumb, his other arm propping the other up at the elbow, eyes sharp, focused on each sketch. So sharp that Jihoon imagines his gaze could tear each paper into shreds.

“Hey,” he calls out when Soonyoung doesn’t notice him. Soonyoung looks at him from the corner of his eye, then turns his gaze back to the sketches – not dismissive of his presence, but making no move to approach Jihoon. Jihoon takes it as an invitation to approach him. They stand, side-by-side, in silence, the occasional student passing through the door next to them providing Jihoon the comfort of noise every now and then.

“Your sketch from last Wednesday,” Soonyoung starts. Jihoon looks up. Soonyoung wasn’t quite as tall as Seungcheol, though they probably were around the same height – but whenever Jihoon craned his neck to look at Seungcheol, the other boy would take up his entire field of vision, whereas Soonyoung’s lithe but wiry frame gave him room to think. He gestures toward it with the thumb he was chewing on. “It’s…different.”

Jihoon grimaces. His paper was decorated with staccato marks of charcoal and light, uncommitted lines creating a hint of a figure. “Yeah,” he sighs, rubbing the back of his head with a hand. “Not my best.”

Soonyoung tilts his head toward him. “It’s not bad, just,” he stops, thinking of the word. “Constipated.”

Jihoon laughs. “That’s a way to put it, I guess.” Another student passes by them. The studio is starting to fill up with the next class.

Soonyoung smiles absentmindedly, still deep in thought. “I mean, it just reminds me of when you overthink. Have you ever had this feeling?” His eyes brighten. “You’re thinking so hard about what you’re going to do that you can’t, you know, actually do it.” 

Adjusts his backpack strap. Weird itch under his skin, tingling. “Then what do you do?” Jihoon asks, meeting Soonyoung’s eyes.

They start walking. Soonyoung shrugs. “The hardest part is starting, after all.”

 

 

 

Seungcheol’s putting on his shoes at midnight. Jihoon turns from where he’s making instant coffee in the kitchen. The overhead light’s been flickering for the past two days, creating inconsistent shadows over his mug. “Where are you going?” he asks. Seungcheol never really left in the middle of the night once he was in the apartment ( _You’ve been glued to that couch since eleven_ , Jihoon remarked one time last year, and the joke stuck).

“I’m going crazy from all this studying,” he groans, double-knotting his sneakers. “I need to get out, get something to eat. You want me to bring back anything?”

Jihoon glances back at the couch – Seungcheol’s couch. This should be fine, is fine, theoretically, so Jihoon doesn’t know why he feels this knot in his stomach, like something’s not fine about this. “Nah,” he says lightly. “Don’t bother.” 

“You sure?” His eyes soften and Jihoon stands straighter, suddenly conscious of how small he feels in Seungcheol’s gaze. It’s like Seungcheol _knows_ (but he can’t – he shouldn’t, and he couldn’t possibly), but Jihoon betrays nothing.

“Yeah,” he says, clearing his throat. Seungcheol keeps looking at him. Jihoon finds it in him to look back directly. “Don’t worry about it.” 

Seungcheol stands up. “Well, don’t come stealing whatever I bring back, then,” he jokes with a wide grin. Jihoon can’t help but smile back, even with the knot in his stomach. 

“I won’t,” he deadpans, and Seungcheol just calls a _yeah, right_ over his shoulder before closing the door behind him, leaving Jihoon alone in their freezing apartment with his now-lukewarm instant coffee and blank sheets of paper.

Goes back to his room. Sits down, staring at the emptiness of the paper staring back at him. It is an emptiness that gives him a strange sense of déjà vu, though Jihoon doesn’t recall having this exact memory.

Thinks of Seungcheol. Thinks of his final project. Thinks of Soonyoung, and that empty sketch from last Wednesday – _the hardest part is starting, after all_ , it’s easier said than done when you’re deathly afraid of doing the wrong thing, so you end up doing nothing and spend all your time staring at blank paper, white canvases bled onto by the ruby seeds –

Thinks of pomegranates. 

 

 

 

_Pomegranate in his left hand, charcoal in his right – he’s got a weak throw with his left, but why not – this is hard and the girl’s crying in the corner and the teacher’s mean –_

_Throw the pomegranate, throw the pomegranate, throw, throw –_

_It leaves his hand._

 

 

 

_**Class Email for Art 1B** _

_For those of you who haven’t discussed your final projects with me, please do so during this coming week or the next. Emails work, too. I just need to make sure you’re making progress._

_Best._

 

 

 

“So how’s your final project coming along?” Soonyoung asks, watching Jihoon set up his easel on Monday from the stool he was perched on. Finals were coming up, so the studio had started bringing in more non-student models. Jihoon wasn’t sure why Soonyoung kept stopping by, when the sketches weren’t even of him anymore, and when Soonyoung mentioned he had some grueling accounting finals coming up, but he never questioned it. 

Jihoon coughs, startled. “About that,” he mutters, slamming his charcoals onto his easel. The corners of Soonyoung’s mouth twitch up in half-amusement and half-something else. He doesn’t bother to decipher it.

“Guess it’s going great,” Soonyoung teases. Jihoon rolls his eyes. He leans forward, and there it is – the weird crawling sensation under his skin. Jihoon leans back instinctively, stiff.

If Soonyoung notices the way Jihoon jerk back, he doesn’t let on that he does. “Are you sure you don’t need me to pose for you?” When Jihoon looks away from his supplies and back at him, there’s a deep concern in his eyes that he doesn’t understand – why did Soonyoung care so much? He was like Seungcheol – caring too much about other people, and not knowing when to stop until those people ended up hurting you – Jihoon has seen it before, in the girls Seungcheol liked back in high school that things never quite worked out with. _I could take care of you,_ but Jihoon knew he wasn’t capable, he was too inside himself –

He shakes his head. “It’s fine.” Soonyoung smiles, pats him on the shoulder. Jihoon stiffens again this time, less noticeably.

 

 

 

His first dinner with Seungcheol in a while. They’re eating take out on the couch – Seungcheol’s couch – Jihoon’s laptop playing a low budget horror movie with subtitles on mute. Seungcheol, easy to scare ever since a bad haunted house experience when they were eight, always insisted on watching scary movies with the volume so low that it was nearly inaudible (Jihoon wouldn’t admit it, but he preferred it that way, too), so Jihoon just didn’t bother with it at all. Usually, they talked over the silence, pretending they weren’t going to be startled but spilling the popcorn all over each other anyway, but it was eerily silent – the distance between them that had been gradually growing during the past weeks farther than they’d expected it to be.

Seungcheol looks over at Jihoon, like he wants to say something. He doesn’t. Keeps looking. Jihoon pretends he doesn’t see anything. Does it again ten minutes later, and then another ten minutes later. 

“You look stressed,” Seungcheol says before shoving more noodles into his mouth. His words are warm, like usual, but extra soft today, Jihoon notices – like the pale, pale turquoise is slowly bleeding its way into Jihoon’s silence, getting him to speak. Jihoon doesn’t particularly feel like talking about anything that he knows Seungcheol wants to talk about today, though.

He snorts at the girl with her face contorted into an expression of horror, her mouth open in a silent scream. “These actors suck,” Jihoon replies, but doesn’t at the same time. He hopes Seungcheol will take the hint.

Seungcheol glances back at the screen. “Have you been getting enough sleep?” he asks just as the girl’s blood splatters on the ground in the film. He’s looking back at Jihoon again and Jihoon starts feeling an irrational irritation from it.

“Yeah,” he shrugs, tone defensive and rude to his own ears. Seungcheol’s stopped watching the movie completely. “I’m trying to watch this,” Jihoon lies, gesturing towards the screen without tearing his eyes away. 

“Are you keeping your final project in the studio? I haven’t seen you working on it at all here…I mean.” There’s a faraway look in Seungcheol’s eyes as he tries to think of more soft sky blue words. Jihoon feels them run into him – too watery and light on the blank canvas of his silence. “I know I haven’t been around that much but I still notice these things, you know…” he trails off.

Jihoon makes the mistake of turning towards Seungcheol at that moment. Their eyes meet, Seungcheol’s gaze soft but his eyebrows furrowed slightly in concern and seriousness, and Jihoon loves how much he cares but right now he kind of hates it, he kind of hates how he feels so much, how he always felt this, and Seungcheol’s only concerned for him – nothing more. Some anger inside him stirs and Jihoon doesn’t get it, doesn’t get why he’s angry when he knows Seungcheol means well, doesn’t get why he can’t calm down because he knows that, doesn’t get why it has to be Seungcheol, who he was born knowing, and why it couldn’t just be some stranger walking in the opposite direction down the street, someone he would look back and watch once and wonder about twenty years from now but never see again.

“Don’t worry about it,” Jihoon says, trying to keep his voice neutral. Seungcheol’s baby blue words run down the length of the canvas, dripping down into the muddled brown of his thoughts, the beautiful blue lost in the fathoms of the mixture of every color of Jihoon’s thoughts.

Seungcheol puts down his take out box. Shit just got real. “But I do worry about it, Jihoon,” he says, voice firm, tangerine words. “I’m your _friend_ –”

Something in Jihoon snaps. “It’s not your fucking business, okay, Seungcheol? I don’t need you to get on my case about shit like this, okay, you’re not my mother! Just leave me alone, okay?”

Silence. Jihoon only realizes he’d raised his voice when he feels how hard he’s breathing. Seungcheol’s looking at him, a blur in the rush of adrenaline that the anger brings, maybe a little bit hurt, maybe a little bit sad. _Good,_ Jihoon thinks, and then it’s not. 

The guilt is instant, overwhelming and inundating, trapping his tongue so he can’t throw anymore caustic words but can’t apologize either. Fuck, he thinks he says, maybe mouths, and then he’s standing up and walking to his room. Jihoon, he hears behind him, Seungcheol with his vulnerable carnation tinted words, Jihoon wait –

The door slams behind him. Silence after the noise touches every space in their apartment. Jihoon blinks, thinking there might be tears in his eyes because something inside him feels like it just burst. Instead, the bare white walls of his room bleed pomegranate red.

 

 

 

_Pomegranate in his left hand, charcoal in his right – he’s got a weak throw with his left, but why not – this is hard and the girl’s crying in the corner and the teacher’s mean –_

_Throw the pomegranate, throw the pomegranate, throw, throw –_

_It leaves his hand and hits the paper he was just sketching on, the white stained with ruby red over light pencil marks. The sound the pomegranate makes when it hits the easel is like silence – not deafening and deafening all at once – and then the teacher is screaming at him –_

 

 

 

His hands feel like he’s holding the sun in them as he walks to his class on Monday – too warm and too tingly, like he’s perpetually hit his funny bone, the grainy sensation pooling into his fingertips. The first thing he notices is Soonyoung isn’t there, which makes Jihoon somewhat glad. Soonyoung, with his kindness and animated way of expressing himself and his steady stream of words, didn’t deserve Jihoon’s stiff curtness and the scathing statements that seemed to grow on the tip of his tongue these days. He shakily sets up his easel, positioned where he was when Soonyoung started posing for the three o’clock class – his lean, bare body, the curves of his buttocks –

Three oh-five. The sound of charcoal on paper, classical music on the radio. Bach – Seungcheol’s father was always playing this piece in his car, to the point that both Seungcheol and Jihoon knew the whole thirty one minutes of it by heart –

Oh right. Drawing. Jihoon lifts a charcoal to the paper, but can’t bring himself to mar the white with a stroke. Only a few weeks left in the semester and he hadn’t even started on his final project –

Three fifteen. It’s like he’s only seen the model just now and realized what kind of pose she’s in. How does he want to approach this? How does he see it? He asks himself questions but can’t seem to answer them and they just build and build and build –

Four. They go on break and the next model comes in. Repeat – rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat –

Jihoon doesn’t even bother turning in his two blank papers at the end of class.

 

 

 

“Jihoon!”

He flinches, feeling a hand clasp his shoulder. When he turns, he sees its Soonyoung, bundled up in an armor of layers, face sunny. “Hey, I knew it was you!” he laughs, scooting to the side of the walkway, out of the way of students rushing to and from class. “It’s been a while, huh?”

“A week or two,” Jihoon estimates. He’s never seen Soonyoung outside of the art building, so it feels weird seeing him anywhere else on campus. 

“That’s a while, isn’t it?” Soonyoung asks, twinkle in his eye. Jihoon shrugs, the corner of his lips unconsciously lifting. “Sorry I haven’t been around, studying for accounting and I’ve been going to physical therapy. You know, I might have a chance at dancing again.” His grin grows wider.

Jihoon’s eyes widen. “That’s great, Soonyoung!” 

“It really is!” Soonyoung replies. His words feel yellow to Jihoon, sunny like his friendly, open smile, and bright, sincere tone. A yellow that was easy on the eyes, that he could stare at all day. “So what about you? Start on that final project?”

Jihoon thinks back on Monday’s studio session. “No,” he frowns. Thinks back on Seungcheol. No images come to mind, only the baby blue dripping into the sludge of Jihoon’s thoughts. “Sadly.”

Soonyoung taps his chin. “Hey, I know you didn’t want my help a couple weeks ago, but it’s down to the wire now and if you don’t have a model now, I don’t think it’s gonna be easy finding one during finals season.” He looks back down at Jihoon, completely serious.

Jihoon shakes his head. “You don’t need to –”

He’s ignored by Soonyoung. “We can meet up in one of those studio rooms – they keep those open all night, don’t they? At nine thirty?” Jihoon nods before he really registers what he’s doing. “Yeah, don’t even pay me. That’s what friends are for, right?” He throws a friendly punch at Jihoon’s shoulder.

 _I’m your friend –_ and Jihoon blinks hard, trying to shake the memory out of his head. What was Seungcheol doing now? He’d been at the apartment all week, studying like usual, but a thick silence hung over them whenever they were there together and his walls were still tinged with pomegranate every now and then, between his sleeplessness and instant coffee and blank papers and canvases.

Soonyoung’s talking again – saying something about class and 5 o’clock that Jihoon can’t quite catch and decipher. “See you, then,” Soonyoung says brightly, waving as he walks away, before Jihoon snaps out of his thoughts. He waves back only when Soonyoung turns his back to him, still thinking about Seungcheol.

 

 

 

Seungcheol’s chewing on his pencil when Jihoon walks in the door of their apartment, turning his head toward Jihoon from where he’s laying down on the couch. The hem of his t-shirt rides up a bit and Jihoon pretends that the strip of skin between the white fabric and Seungcheol’s pants doesn’t exist. 

“Did you give the rent to the landlord?” he asks, his teeth on his pencil muffling his words. Jihoon looks at his shoes as he takes them off, places them on the rack. Looks at the clock hanging on the far wall, ten minutes early because both of them had the habit of running late, and then the kitchen, where the light was on for some strange reason. 

“Yeah,” Jihoon says, heading straight toward his room. Seungcheol chews his pencil thoughtfully, the weight of his gaze on Jihoon’s back. Like he wants to say something, do something about the schism between them, but doesn’t know where to start.

He’s already in his room when he hears Seungcheol’s soft _thanks,_ tone the same way he says _I’m sorry_ (but it’s not your fault, it’s never your fault). Talks to Jihoon like that a lot these days since their fight, the corners of his mouth heavy, words saturated shades of their soft variations. Jihoon closes the door behind him, trying to keep it – him, Seungcheol – out. He doubts Seungcheol will do anything more about it today, textbooks open and homework assignments thrown all over the coffee table. His thoughts float toward pencils – Seungcheol’s pencils – the ones with teeth marks that Jihoon liked to run his fingers over. 

He doesn’t anymore. He packs the supplies he needs for meeting up with Soonyoung into his backpack. The charcoals fall out of their case when he picks it up, hitting the ground in a flurry of noise that reminds Jihoon of falling pomegranate seeds. Guesses he forgot to close it all the way before. Sighs and leans against his desk chair, and it rolls with his weight.

 _We were just born knowing each other._ He doesn’t anymore.

 

 

 

Jihoon squints. Something is off about the whole picture now that he’s stepped away from it. Soonyoung looks at his work over Jihoon’s shoulder, and Jihoon can feel the occasional warmth of his breath against the back of his ear. He surprisingly feels nothing this time – no itch, no weird feeling under his skin.

“Do you want to take a break?” Jihoon sighs once he decides he can’t pinpoint what exactly is wrong. Soonyoung yawns, leaning back in his stool, supporting himself with his core – a habit, Jihoon’s realized in the month or so he’s known Soonyoung.

He shakes his head. “Nah, I’m fine. And you need to keep working, anyway,” he says, readjusting his posture on the stool so he’s lying flat, back unsupported. “You should try drawing me from here,” Soonyoung laughs with much effort. “Wow, it hurts to laugh like this.”

The edges of Jihoon’s lips pull up at that. “Do you actually think you can hold that pose?” he chuckles. 

Soonyoung lifts his head so he can make eye contact with Jihoon with those sharp eyes of his. There’s a mischievous glint in his eyes. 

“Try me.”

 

 

 

Jihoon captures Soonyoung in the strong lines he sees in the way Soonyoung holds himself, visible even through the plain gray shirt and jeans he wears. A plane here, a plane there – Soonyoung carried himself like a series of pictures, snapped into place, and when he fidgets, slightly set into motion. Lean and lithe where Jihoon was just small and Seungcheol was broad, colors settled into the bends and straight lines of his frame – dripping indigo here, a field of marigold blooming where the light hit his neck. And where those colors saturated – intense and bursting with his life, stronger than the fleshless sounds of Seungcheol’s words, an entire different kind of existence – were Soonyoung’s stories. The edge of the right ear was the flesh of a blood orange, the guilt that came with his mother’s disapproval of his part-time job, the skin in the shadow of his neck slate and solid, his fingertips dipped in an almost highlighter yellow, the corners of his mouth puce and prone to smiling. 

Where there were stories, there were feelings. Emotions just rolled off of Soonyoung’s frame, rich with moods to evoke, all up to interpretation. Jihoon always feared picking the wrong one, feared it so much that he almost couldn’t bring himself to put charcoal against paper, but Soonyoung had come to him that one time because _you’re talented, Jihoon_ and then he suddenly feels less afraid. 

Jihoon didn’t know how to transfer these feelings into words, like Seungcheol could – soft, beautiful variations of such deep colors, but he could see them and paint them and put them into images on paper and canvases. Body language and expression, combined with Jihoon’s projection of the feelings that were embedded in Soonyoung’s poses, made his fingers fly and charcoal stain the pads of his fingertips.

 

 

After five poses, five of his papers are full.

 

 

 

Soonyoung walks Jihoon back to his apartment after they’re done at the studio. The midnight is so dark and silent that it almost feels disrespectful to disrupt it with small talk and personal stories. They take their strides side-by-side, in an tired wordless, far enough apart, but close enough together.

“Well, this is me,” Jihoon says, once they’re in front of the building. “I’d let you crash, but Seungcheol practically lives on our couch…” He trails off.

Soonyoung’s eyes still shine in the dark, under the street light in front of their apartment, flickering like a strobe light – the one he and Seungcheol were at when he spoke about his bursts of memory, before pomegranates began hunting him in his sleep. Sharp eyes, Jihoon remembers from the first time he saw them. Fox eyes. Soonyoung probably sees more than Jihoon ever thought he did. 

“Don’t worry about it,” he dismisses with a wave of his hand. “I’m just glad I helped you out.”

Jihoon nods. They stand beneath the flickering street light in an amicable silence for a moment. 

Soonyoung pulls the neck of his jacket up towards his chin. “Well, I better go. Have to wake up early for my eight AM tomorrow,” he tells Jihoon with a resigned look on his face. Takes a step toward Jihoon, takes a same-distanced step back. “Good night, then, Jihoon.”

“Night.” Soonyoung starts further down the sidewalk to get to his apartment when Jihoon suddenly has a thought.

“How do you talk to someone without using words?” Jihoon asks Soonyoung at twelve fifty-nine AM, dangerously bordering one in the morning. “You fuck things up and then you just…can’t make things better no matter what you say.”

Soonyoung turns back to him slightly, looking at Jihoon underneath the street light, disappearing and reappearing in images at rapid succession. Soonyoung had never judged Jihoon for anything, for his lack of words or his awkward ones when he did say them. He looks up to a floor above where Jihoon and Seungcheol live, considering, then back to Jihoon. 

“But you have to try!” Soonyoung calls over the distance, shaking the midnight silence out of its reverie, a somewhat welcome distraction. “Even if you can’t express yourself with words…you have to try or else they’ll never know.”

Jihoon scrapes the curb with the sole of his sneaker. Looks down, then looks back up, wondering why it sounded so easy when Soonyoung said it, but it was so hard when Jihoon wrapped his mind around the idea. “How?” he calls, Soonyoung starting to turn away again.

Soonyoung looks at him like he believes in him, or some shit like that. Jihoon’s sleep deprived eyes may have been deceiving him. “The hardest part is starting, after all,” he replies, waving encouragingly. Then, he’s one with the darkness.

 

 

 

It’s four in the morning and Jihoon’s in front of a canvas, thinking about Soonyoung and Seungcheol and pomegranates and colors and his other art major friends and his family. The itch that crawled under his skin when Soonyoung first talked to him. The bite marks indented in the wood of all the pencils Seungcheol touched, even the ones Jihoon lent him. Words – Seungcheol’s and Soonyoung’s, feather light and impossibly bright, respectively, and his fell in the gray area somewhere in between.

His charcoal is on the paper. Pomegranates come to mind, thrown against a white background, cracking open with the guts spilling out, bleeding everywhere. Tart and ruby red, stained with his dying inspiration, bleeding out. There’s a line there. And another line meeting that one. Lean frame, broad shoulders. Rifles through the five sketches of Soonyoung from earlier that night. 

The look Seungcheol gives him whenever they hang out, soft eyes with so much warmth in them and he just _knows_ , knows Jihoon like Jihoon knows himself, sincerity hues of pale gold and lavender. And the way Soonyoung looks at him – bright eyes, open expression, they’re friends and Jihoon’s never had a friend outside of his major and Seungcheol, but Soonyoung listens to what he says, patience dusted with saffron and cyan. Jeonghan and that strand of his hair that always falls into his face, Jisoo and his clumsy words but good intentions, Nayeon and her wide openness, Myungeun and her quiet dedication and disgruntled comments, Wonwoo and his tendency to stay up all night painting, sleeping whenever the sun was out. Jihoon weaves them in between his strokes of charcoal, thinking but removed, feeling but numb. He finds himself somewhere in the midst of those lines, connected to all these people and colors – someone who doesn’t deserve everything he’s gotten in his life but loved nonetheless, and loving back. 

Eight AM. There’s a skeleton of a work on the canvas, but it’s not a dead man. Jihoon stares at it from where he’s propping his chin up on his arms on his desk, the sketch of sharp, warm fox eyes staring back at him with their whites.

 

 

 

He sees Jeonghan leaning against the wall, nodding along to the music he’s listening to, when he walks out of his professor’s office on Thursday. Jeonghan pulls down his headphones with a smile once he notices Jihoon.

“Started your final project?” he asks, looping an arm over Jihoon’s shoulders. Jihoon pretends to shrug him off, but Jeonghan just laughs his carefree laugh and keeps his grip.

“Yeah,” Jihoon laughs, too. “About time, you know?”

Jeonghan gives him a lopsided grin. “We were worried about you for a while there, you know,” he says, shaking Jihoon a little to emphasize his point. Jihoon shakes his head, smile on his face.

“I know.”

 

 

 

Two days before his final project is due, and Jihoon’s filling in the spaces where the muscles go when Seungcheol knocks on his open door. Jihoon looks up abruptly, silver stars sparkling in his vision before he blinks them away. He watches as Seungcheol places a mug filled to the brim with the instant coffee Jihoon hasn’t touched for weeks on his desk. A peace offering. Jihoon reaches for it, keeping his face neutral though Seungcheol never puts enough milk.

Seungcheol looks at his toes. Wiggles them. Clears his throat. “So…my dad says he can take us back home next week after my finals are done. Thursday at seven. Is that okay with you?”

He puts down his charcoal. Keeps his eyes trained on Seungcheol’s face. “Yeah,” Jihoon says. “That works.”

Seungcheol nods, still looking at his feet. A silence spreads between them, the same kind of silence that’s been in their apartment ever since they fought that one day, broken by the occasional obligatory communication about bills and Seungcheol’s snoring. Jihoon hesitates, opening his mouth wanting to say something, but not knowing where exactly to start. 

Seungcheol breaks it first. Looks up from his feet and over to Jihoon, who’s already looking at him. Smiles a little, almost shyly, like the way he smiles when he reaches for the last chip in the bag or when he’s tapped Jihoon on the shoulder and pretended it wasn’t him. “Look, Jihoon –”

Jihoon beats him to it. “I’m sorry, Seungcheol,” he blurts out, the words rushing out, syllables like bullets, like he’d been holding them in so long that they were dying to travel to Seungcheol’s ears. “I shouldn’t –”

“No, I’m sorry, Jihoon,” Seungcheol starts, shaking his head. “I should’ve kept quiet and trusted you to handle it, you’re right, it’s really not my business and you probably didn’t need my nagging to stress you out even more. I just…” he sighs, words a tea green. “I was worried, but I should’ve shut up, I’m sorry –”

“It’s not your fault, Seungcheol,” he interrupts, shifting in his chair. “It was me, you know. I just...” Jihoon takes a deep breath, not quite knowing what to say to make things better, make things okay. _The hardest part is starting, after all,_ so he exhales and continues talking. “Was stressed and annoyed and I don’t know why and I took it out on you when I shouldn’t have and by the time I realized I was being a dick it was too late and I already fucked things up –” Pauses. Seungcheol’s looking at him, expecting him to go on, knowing he isn’t done talking yet. “You’re too nice to me and I was such a dick, I’m sorry, Seungcheol, I’m sorry –”

When he looks up again, Seungcheol’s eyes are wet with tears that threaten to fall. “Jihoon, don’t say that –”

Jihoon balls his fingers into fists. “But it’s true, you know, you’re too kind and I don’t deserve it and I –”

“You deserve everything, Jihoon,” Seungcheol says, taking in a watery breath. “We were practically born together, Jihoon, you know? Don’t say things like that, don’t say –”

Shaky voice, shaking fists, shaking vision. Seungcheol tilts this way and that before aligning with gravity once again. “I’ve loved you for so long and you’ve never known.”

Silence. Jihoon takes this as a cue to keep going. “And I know you can never love me back the same way, because you’re not like me, and okay, I just don’t deserve you and that’s why it’s hard for me to really believe when you say I deserve things because no matter how much you say it, anyone says it, I don’t believe it!”

“Jihoon.”

When he looks back at Seungcheol, Seungcheol’s not looking away. He wipes at his eyes, more bloodshot that Jihoon remembers them being. When was the last time he and Seungcheol had actually looked at each other before today? Jihoon feels his fingertips tingling, feels like his mind is separated from his body, separated from what he just said, separated from reality, reality merely a figment of his imagination, floating endlessly through space.

“I know.”

There’s a ringing in his ears, _I know, I know, I know_ echoing in between. “What?”

Seungcheol digs the heels of his palms to wipe away his tears before looking back at Jihoon. “I’ve known you loved me for a long time.”

Jihoon’s blood turns cold and rushes to his head all at once. “Why didn’t you say anything?” he whispers, feeling his face go pale. 

“I don’t know,” Seungcheol starts, eyebrows furrowed, but eyes soft. “I didn’t know what to say. What to do. Shit, you know me better than anyone else does, Jihoon, I didn’t know what to do.” Takes a shaky breath. Exhales. Takes another, more stable this time. “You deserve someone who loves you back the way you love them, and that isn’t me, wasn’t going to be me. I don’t know.”

“I knew that,” Jihoon says, voice so quiet he thinks Seungcheol might not be able to hear him. “I knew that, Seungcheol. But you don’t really decide the people you fall in love with sometimes.”

Seungcheol looks down at his feet, collecting his thoughts, before speaking again. “I wish you fell in love with someone who could love you back.”

Jihoon considers that. Scoots over on his stool, leaving a space for Seungcheol. He takes it, and leans his head against Jihoon’s shoulder. “I guess this is what it feels like to get your heart broken,” Jihoon deadpans, but when he gauges where his heart should be hurting, he doesn’t feel any cuts or fissures. The only evidence that anything occurred is the pressing of Seungcheol’s head on his right shoulder.

Seungcheol reaches for Jihoon’s left hand. Holds it in his. Squeezes. And in that gentle squeeze, is a _I’m sorry, you’re my best friend, Jihoon, we’re okay, right?, I’m here for you –_

_I’m glad we were born knowing each other, Jihoon._

 

 

 

_Pomegranate in his left hand, charcoal in his right – he’s got a weak throw with his left, but why not – this is hard and the girl’s crying in the corner and the teacher’s mean –_

_Throw the pomegranate, throw the pomegranate, throw, throw –_

_It leaves his hand and hits the paper he was just sketching on, the white stained with ruby red over light pencil marks. The sound the pomegranate makes when it hits the easel is like silence – not deafening and deafening all at once – and then the teacher is screaming at him –_

_But he likes how it looks, pomegranate juice running down the paper like watery paint. It looks angry. Just as angry as he felt when he threw it. Just as angry as the teacher is at him when she tells him to sit in the corner for the rest of the class without his pencils and easel. It looks like something he could see in an art museum, hanging on the wall. It looks like something people would take time looking at._

_It looks like art._

_And so Jihoon falls in love._

 

 

 

White spaces around a figure, charcoal shadows at its feet, the pupils in those fox eyes looking to some point to the side in the far off distance. Shapes of color – Soonyoung’s indigo and marigold, Seungcheol’s baby blue and lavender, light and shadows. It’s a synthesis of multiple people, people that he’s not sure he deserves, but loves, standing in Soonyoung’s pose. 

When Jihoon finally breathes again, his canvas is complete. The last cup of instant coffee Seungcheol made him at three (with the right amount of milk for once) is at his feet, cold now. He picks it up, sips it as he studies his completed work.

It’s bitter and dry, like the juice of a pomegranate.

 

 

 

Soonyoung’s sitting on the stairs leading up to the art building by the time Jihoon gets there. His hair is a little neater than Jihoon remembers, probably got a trim over the holiday break, but his eager, sharp eyes are exactly the same as Jihoon recalls sketching them in as. 

“Wanted to show me something?” he calls out to Jihoon, jumping up off the step. They’d exchanged numbers before the semester ended and texted over the holiday. A few days ago, Jihoon had messaged Soonyoung about meeting up to go see the new sketches of the figure drawing class that Soonyoung was posing for again.

“Yeah,” Jihoon replies. They start down the hallway to get to the studio, Jihoon walking slowly, Soonyoung matching his pace. 

He stops before the new exhibit on the wall. “Soonyoung,” he says, the other boy already halfway down the hallway. “Do you see yourself?”

Soonyoung doubles back. Squints, scrutinizing each canvas. His eyes finally find Jihoon’s, tilts his head to consider it further. “Kind of,” Soonyoung says, a laugh bubbling in his voice. “That’s my pose, isn’t it?” Jihoon nods.

“But it’s not… _completely_ me,” he continues, tapping his chin in thought. “Right?”

“It isn’t,” Jihoon confirms. He wrings his fingers. “What do you think about it?”

Soonyoung stares at the canvas for a while in pure silence, and they stand, side-by-side, the occasional student walking past them providing them with noise every now and then. Fox eyes meet the draw-in ones with Seungcheol’s gentle gaze. “I like it,” he finally decides, and Jihoon lets out a breath he didn’t even realize he was holding. “What grade did you get on it?”

“B,” Jihoon shrugs. “I started too late for it to be better. But I guess the department saw something in it, enough to hang it up.” They crane their necks to look at it for a bit more.

Soonyoung tilts his head down to meet Jihoon’s eyes. “Good job, Jihoon.” Pairs his bright yellow words with a bright smile, almost blinding. 

“Thanks,” Jihoon smiles back. “Thanks, Soonyoung.” 

Reaches for Jihoon’s left hand – the same hand that threw the pomegranate all those years ago, and the same hand that Seungcheol squeezed and then they knew that they were going to be okay. He holds it in his like it is made of bird bones – delicate and feather soft, like Seungcheol’s words – and for once, Jihoon’s not thinking of anything else but the right here and right now, with Soonyoung.


End file.
